The dynastic war between Isabelline liberalism and Carlism was a savage civil war between urban liberalism and rural traditionalism, between the poorly paid and poorly equipped regular army of the liberal governments, supporting Isabella, and the semi-guerrilla forces of the Carlists. The Carlist strength lay in the north, especially in the Basque provinces and Navarre, where there was strong support for the fueros against liberal centralism and for the traditional Roman Catholic order represented by the religious bigotry of Don Carlos and his circle. But the Carlists could not break out of their bases in the north to capture an important city. The great Carlist leader Tomás Zumalacárregui y de Imaz was killed in an attempt to capture Bilbao, and Don Carlos’s expedition to Madrid failed (1837). In 1839 Rafel Maroto, the Carlist commander, staged a mutiny against the clerical court of Don Carlos and came to terms with Baldomero Espartero, the most successful of Isabella’s generals.

María Cristina allied with liberalism out of military necessity, not from conviction. She would have preferred to grant administrative reforms rather than consent that her daughter should become a constitutional monarch. But only the liberals could save her daughter’s throne from the Carlists, and the minimum demand of all liberals was a constitution. As regent from 1833 to 1840, she therefore consistently supported conservative liberals against the radicals. The Royal Statute (1834) represented this alliance between respectable upper-middle-class liberals and the crown.

This conservative constitution, with its steep property franchise and the great powers it gave the crown in the choice of ministers, could not stop the drift toward the left implicit in liberalism itself. The radicals, who were the heirs of the exaltados of 1820–23, were installed in power first by a series of provincial town uprisings in 1835 and later, after a short-lived conservative reaction, by an army mutiny that forced María Cristina to accept the constitution of 1812. The radical politicians, however, accepted a more moderate compromise constitution—that of 1837. Of more enduring importance was the sale of church lands to finance the war. The great disentailment carried out by Prime Minister Juan Alvarez Mendizábal and his successors profoundly altered the social structure of Spain by putting on the market large quantities of land, most of which were bought by large landowners or prosperous peasants.

Moderates, progressives, and the generals

The Carlist wars left civilian politicians discredited, and generals became the arbiters of politics not, as in 1814–20, as intruders but as part of the political machinery. They became the “swords” of the two main political groups. The moderados (moderates), who were upper-middle-class oligarchic liberals fearful of democratic violence and upholders of the prerogatives of the crown, represented the conservative stream in liberalism. Their rivals, the progresistas (progressives), were the heirs of the exaltados and represented a lower stratum of the middle class; the progresistas were prepared to use the discontent of the urban masses in order to bring pressure on the crown to give them office. Their instrument was the Urban Militia. General Espartero used his military faction and his supporters among the younger progresista politicians and their artisan followers in the great cities to oust María Cristina and establish himself as regent (1841–43). Espartero proved a disappointment to the radical progresistas, who now allied with his conservative opponents under his military and political rival, Ramón María Narváez. In 1843 Espartero was ousted by a pronunciamiento.

Narváez jettisoned his progresista allies through a court intrigue, and between 1844 and 1854 he and his fellow generals dominated domestic politics as representatives of the moderados. Their administrative, educational, and financial measures and the formation of the Civil Guard were lasting achievements; however, the generals could not stabilize their rule on the basis of their constitution of 1845, a conservative revision of the constitution of 1837. The period was disturbed by a series of progresista military risings.

To the left of the progresistas, who were prepared to accept the monarchy if it gave them office, developed a Democratic Party, which was prepared to dethrone Isabella II, who was declared of age to rule in 1843. Never strong in numbers outside the towns, the Democrats radicalized politics. Orthodox progresista politicians were embarrassed by their extremist attitudes but could not neglect their potential role as urban revolutionaries.

It was not the Democrats but a group of discontented generals led by Leopoldo O’Donnell who successfully revolted in 1854. They were prepared to sacrifice the dynasty because the queen and her mother favoured a rigid court conservatism that effectively excluded them from influence. The rebellious military oligarchs were forced to call in civilian and radical support. This turned their pronunciamiento into a mild revolution. Isabella survived only through Espartero’s political timidity. Unprepared to accept the backing of the Democrats as the “George Washington of Spain,” he accepted an alliance with O’Donnell, who was determined to arrest the drift to radicalism. In 1856 he broke with Espartero, defeated a demonstration in his favour, and dissolved the National Militia, the instrument of the left-wing Progressives. The radical thrust was thus defeated.

Economic expansion

The “revolutionary” period of 1854–56 saw no important constitutional change, but the further extension of disentailment to the lands belonging to the municipalities (the Land Reform of Madoz [1855]) and the new law for limited companies provided the legal structure for a rapid expansion of the economy. To promote this expansion, there were new injections of foreign credit—particularly French—and new banks. This capital allowed construction to begin on the railroad network that was to provide the transport infrastructure for a national market. The textile industry of Catalonia flourished as a modern wool manufacture grew up; in the Basque Country the second pole of an industrial economy developed slowly around iron. The still-dominant agricultural sector expanded as the church and common lands provided new fields for wheat, the easiest of cash crops; the growth of such towns as Barcelona created a market for vegetables, wines, and fruit.

Expansion resulted in the classic expression of 19th-century liberalism—the haute bourgeoisie of finance and industry. Members of this new class ranged from solid Catalan manufacturers demanding protective tariffs to safeguard their gains to daring speculators such as José, marqués de Salamanca, a railway financier who took an active part in political life and the urbanization of Madrid. It also included successful generals ready to forget their humble origins. Together with the large landowners, these groups formed the oligarchy of liberalism.

The government that presided over this prosperity was O’Donnell’s Liberal Union, which was an attempt to fuse all dynastic parties in a broad-based coalition. It provided a long period of stable government (1856–63), and, had the Progressive politicians been less afraid of losing their left wing to the Democrats and had the queen been willing to grant Progressives power, the dynasty might have survived. Instead, she excluded the Progressives and forced them first to withdraw formally from political life and then to contemplate revolution. Their “sword,” General Juan Prim y Prats (a pharmacist’s grandson and a striking example of the social mobility of the liberal army), was a resolute conspirator and the ablest of the political generals of the 19th century. When Isabella’s court ministers alienated O’Donnell’s followers, a powerful coalition was formed, and Prim dropped his alliance with the Democrats. A series of mediocre ultraconservative governments, a growth in democratic agitation among university intellectuals (whose main concern was the hold of the church over education), and an economic slump caused by bad harvests gave wide support to the military rising against Isabella. Her armies would not defend her, and she was forced to leave for France in September 1868.

The revolution that led to the dethronement of Isabella was the work of army oligarchs led by Francisco Serrano y Domínguez and Progressive conspirators behind Prim. The Democrats became active in setting up juntas after the revolution; for the most part they rapidly became Federal Republicans under the influence of the theories of the French anarchist Pierre-Joseph Proudhon as presented by their leader, Francisco Pi i Margall. The Democratic intellectuals’ main contribution was to add a radical democratic content to the demands of the military oligarchy.

The generals were determined to keep the leadership of the revolution in their own hands by channeling it into a constitutional monarchy. Although they had to concede universal male suffrage in the constitution of 1869, they ruthlessly suppressed republican risings in the summer of that year. Their problem was to find a constitutional monarch. Prim’s attempt to persuade a Hohenzollern to accept the throne was opposed by France and set off the Franco-German War in 1870. In November 1870 Amadeo (Amadeus), second son of Victor Emmanuel, king of Italy, was elected king, and Prim, the kingmaker, was assassinated the day Amadeo entered Madrid.

Amadeo attempted to rule as a constitutional monarch. Opposed both by Republicans and by Carlists, he could form no stable government from the “September coalition” of former conservative Liberal Unionists, the ex-Progressives, and the moderate Democrats—now called Radicals. Once Amadeo called the Radicals to power, the conservatives deserted the dynasty. Amadeo abdicated after an attack by the Radicals on the army in February 1873, and subsequently the Cortes proclaimed Spain a republic.

The Republic of 1873 came into existence to fill the political vacuum created by Amadeo’s abdication. The Republican Party was neither strong nor united. When the Republican leaders, on legal scruples, refused to declare for a federal republic, the provincial federal extremists revolted.

This Cantonalist revolt was serious in Cartagena, Alcoy, and Málaga. Simultaneously the authorities had to deal with a new uprising by the Carlists, the Second Carlist War (1873–76). The Republican leaders had allowed attacks on the army that had reduced it to impotence. To conservatives and other supporters of order, the country seemed on the verge of total dissolution; the Carlists were immensely strengthened by the “excesses” of the Cantonalists. Too late, Emilio Castelar y Ripoll, the last president of the republic, tried to recapture the loyalty of the army. In January 1874 General Manuel Pavía y Rodríguez de Alburquerque drove the Republican deputies from the Cortes building in the hope of creating a government of order. Pavía turned power over to General Francisco Serrano to form a coalition government.

General Serrano took over as president of a unitary republic ruled from Madrid. His main task was victory over the Carlists, now a strong force in northern Spain. In this he failed, and on December 29, 1874, a young brigadier, Arsenio Martínez Campos, “declared” for Alfonso XII, the son of Isabella.

There was no resistance. The extreme threat of anarchy in 1873 had resulted in a strong conservative reaction, strengthened by the religious policies pursued since 1868. The constitution of 1869 for the first time had allowed complete freedom of religion. Despite its failure to deliver political stability, the Revolution of 1868 bequeathed to Spain the model of a modern secular state based on universal suffrage. Anarchism pentrated Spain’s extreme left, especially in rural Andalusia and in industrial Catalonia, where the lower classes deserted a long tradition of political action via the Democratic and Republican parties and moderate unionism. Although anarchists were persecuted after 1873, the movement was kept alive by small groups of enthusiasts.

The independence movement in Cuba, which, along with Puerto Rico, was the last possession of Spain in America, posed the worst problem for Spain in the period 1868–75. Cubans had long resented the failure to reform rule by captains general, to grant some autonomy, and to ease the economic sacrifices that were imposed by the Spanish tariff system. The Ten Years’ War that began in October 1868 made great demands on Spain both in terms of manpower (100,000 by 1870) and money. The war made difficulties for all governments in power in Spain after 1868 and forced abandonment of the most popular of the pledges made by the rebels in 1868: the abolition of the arbitrary and socially selective recruitment system. Like the Carlist wars, the war in Cuba tended to favour the monarchical reaction.

The restored monarchy, 1875–1923

Once the Carlists had been defeated and the Cubans had accepted the peace settlement of El Zanjón (1878), the restored monarchy provided the most stable government Spain had known since 1833. This stability was sustained by an uneven but respectable economic growth.

Stability, 1875–98

The architect of the restoration itself and of the constitution of 1876 was Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. A superb politician, Cánovas had hoped for a civilian restoration; he accepted Martínez Campos’s coup but used the young Alfonso XII to keep the military out of politics.

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, detail of an engraving by Aruselio Carretero.Courtesy of the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid

The Canovite system was artificial in that it required the contrived rotation in office (turno pacífico) of a Liberal and a Conservative party; this in turn demanded governmental control of elections, which were run by caciques, or local political bosses, who controlled votes in their districts and delivered them in return for favours for themselves and their supporters. Only in this way could the government selected by the king and the politicians in Madrid obtain a parliamentary majority. Extensive corruption and the use of administrative pressures on electors were considered the only ways to make the parliamentary system work in an underdeveloped society. This system survived the death of Alfonso XII (1885) and began to falter only in the 1890s, toward the end of his wife’s regency. The Carlist threat weakened with defeat, and the majority of Republicans in Spain were domesticated and reconciled to the use of “legal” means.

“Without being a rich country,” wrote an economist in the early 1880s, “Spain has become comfortably off.” This prosperity, untroubled by the claims of organized labour, was the result of the demand for iron ore after the invention of the Bessemer process (England and France invested heavily in mineral production), the demand for Spanish wine after the devastations by phylloxera in France, and the resumption of railway construction in Spain. The third largest wool industry in Europe grew up alongside the older cotton mills in Catalonia. The boom did not break until the late 1880s, when an agricultural depression set in. A wave of economic pessimism preceded the political and intellectual reaction of 1898.

The loss of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines in 1898 following the Spanish-American War exposed the Spanish political system to severe criticism. No fiscal and political reform sufficient to satisfy Cuban demands could be effected within the framework of the monarchy, partly because of the pressure of the Spanish loyalist party in Cuba. A revolt in 1895 set off another costly war against Cuban guerrillas. The intervention of the United States could not be staved off by a last-minute grant of autonomy. Their humiliating and total naval defeat in 1898 became known to Spaniards as “the Disaster.” Spain now lost the Philippines and the last of its possessions in the Americas at the very time when the great European powers were building their overseas empires. These events exacerbated an already existing pessimism among intellectuals about Spain’s national and racial “degeneration.”

Opposition movements, 1898–1923

Criticism of the restoration monarchy came from the Catalan and Basque regionalists, a revived Republican Party, the proletarian parties, the army, the more forward-looking of the Spanish politicians, and intellectuals.

Iberian Peninsula and Andorra, c. 1900Map of the Iberian Peninsula, Andorra, and nearby islands (c. 1900) from the 10th edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Basque regionalism, though more akin in its ideas to extreme nationalist movements, was less a challenge than Catalan regionalism. With their own language and a revived cultural tradition, known as the Renaixença, Catalan nationalists moved from a demand for protection of Catalan industry against “Castilian” free trade to a demand for political autonomy. The Regionalist League (Catalan: Lliga Regionalista), founded in 1901 and dominated by the Catalan industrialist Francesc Cambó i Batlle and the theoretician of Catalan nationalism Enric Prat de la Riba, demanded the end of the turno and a revival of regionalism within a genuine party system. Cambó wished to solve the Catalan question “within Spain”—that is, by legal means and in cooperation with monarchist politicians. The revival of Catalanism, however, set off a “Castilian” reaction in which moderate Catalans were accused of selfishness or of hiding separatist aims under “respectable” regionalism.

Anti-Catalan sentiment was particularly strong among army officers, still smarting from the defeat of 1898. A string of antimilitary cartoons in Catalan periodicals led members of the Barcelona garrison to sack the offices of these publications (the Cu-Cut!) and demand the application of military law to insults against the military. The passage of the Law of Jurisdictions (1906), which largely met the officers’ demands, led to the creation of Solidaridad Catalana, a united front of Catalanist parties.

In the 1907 election the Solidaridad Catalana defeated the establishment parties but then divided into a right wing (which accepted a solution within the monarchy) and a left wing (which was to drift to Republicanism). Cambó’s cooperation with Madrid brought Catalonia no tangibleconcessions.

Republicanism, which had degenerated into local politicking and lived on its memories of 1873, was revived in a number of major cities: in Valencia by the novelist-politician Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, in Gijón by Melquíades Alvarez, and, most significantly, in Barcelona by the colourful demagogue and former journalist Alejandro Lerroux. Lerroux’s Radical Party offered a program that appealed to the alienated working-class voter of Barcelona. Competing with a slow revival of anarchism, Lerroux veered between terrorism, educational propaganda, and union activity; the anarcho-syndicalist union, the National Confederation of Labour (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo; CNT), was founded in 1910. The socialist movement with its union (the General Union of Workers [Unión General de Trabajadores; UGT], founded 1888) was relatively weak except in the mining districts of the north and in Madrid, where it was dominated by its French-influenced founder, Pablo Iglesias. In 1909 the socialists abandoned their boycott of “bourgeois” politics and allied themselves with the Republicans. This alliance gave the party a political leverage in excess of its voting strength.

The intellectuals’ protest embraced the writers of widely differing ideas collectively known as the Generation of ’98. Joaquín Costa, a voluminous writer, was an especially harsh critic of caciquismo (the system of electoral manipulation on the local level by political bosses); he wanted a revived, effectively democratic, modernized Spain. Miguel de Unamuno saw regeneration in terms of a return to “pure” Spanish values. The Generation of ’98 distrusted politics as managed by professional politicians, who, they said, were out of touch with the “real” Spain. Although the defeat of 1898 loomed large in these intellectuals’ thoughts, the cultural pessimism they expressed was far from a peculiarly Spanish affair. Rather, it was part of and shared many features with a more general European fin de siècle pessimism.

Among the politicians themselves, the conservative leaders Francisco Silvela and Antonio Maura and the democratic liberal José Canalejas sought to regenerate the system by widening the degree of political participation through “sincere” elections. Opposed by the professional party members, Maura only succeeded in confusing the party structure by splitting the Conservative Party. The danger of “sincere” elections to the political establishment was revealed by the Republican victories in 1903.

The call up of troops for Morocco, where Spanish troops were engaged in operations protecting the Spanish coastal possessions, set off the Tragic Week of 1909 in Barcelona. Public order collapsed, and anarchists and Radical Republicans burned churches and convents. Maura was driven from office because Alfonso XIII (who ruled in his own right from 1902) accepted the Liberals’ estimate of the harm Maura’s firm repression would inflict on the monarchy. Rather than resist a Liberal Party that had allied with the Republican parties, the king held that the Liberals were a useful “lightning conductor,” protecting the monarchy from the threat on the left. Ever since Maura’s fall, the king’s diagnosis had been challenged by conservatives.

World War I produced increased strains. Real wages fell, making the unions restive, and in 1917 junior officers formed juntas and struck for better conditions. The ensuing crisis was exploited by Catalan politicians, who increasingly pressed for autonomy. The revolutionary coalition consisting of Radical Republicans and Catalan regionalists split, and a general strike frightened Cambó and the Catalans, who threatened to call a national convention that would unite all critics of the monarchy. The formation of a national government under Maura ended the last serious attempt to regenerate the political system and to make it respond to reformist and Catalan demands. No subsequent government was strong enough to face the anarchist agitation in Catalonia and the Moroccan War.

Spain, through negotiations with France, had obtained a protectorate in Morocco in 1912. In an effort to pacify Morocco, economizing politicians were ready for compromise with tribal leaders, but the generals saw conquest as the only solution. A bid by General Fernández Silvestre, reputedly backed by Alfonso XIII, for a crowning victory ended in the terrible massacre of Spanish troops at the Battle of Anual (Anwal) in 1921. Opposition politicians were determined to expose the king’s action and criticize the army.

World War I had given the anarcho-syndicalist movement great power. At the same time there grew a terrorist fringe, which the leaders of the CNT could not control. Although CNT leaders Salvador Seguí and Angel Pestaña shared the anarchist contempt for political action, they wished to build unions powerful enough to challenge the employers by direct action. They mistrusted the libertarian tradition of spontaneous revolution as a means of toppling the bourgeois state. The great Barcelona strike of 1919 was the most impressive in Spanish history. When the employers’ violent reaction discredited the moderates in the CNT, it was followed by a wave of assassinations by gangsters employed by both the anarchists and the employers.

Thus, when General Miguel Primo de Rivera staged his pronunciamiento in September 1923, he received the support of the conservative classes fearful for social order. For example, the Lliga became more concerned about suppressing strikes than about Catalan autonomy, for which it had campaigned from 1915 to 1918. He also had a tacit alliance with Alfonso XIII, who was tired of politicians who could not provide him with effective governments and afraid of being blamed for the disaster at Anual by a parliamentary committee that was scheduled to report in the fall of 1923.